Mirror Neurons Differentially Encode the Peripersonal and Extrapersonal Space of Monkeys
Mirror Neurons Differentially Encode the Peripersonal and Extrapersonal Space of Monkeys
复制标题
DOI：
10.1126/science.1166818
复制
发表时间：
2009-04-17
期刊：
影响因子：
56.9
通讯作者：
Casile, Antonino
中科院分区：
文献类型：
--
作者：
Caggiano, Vittorio;Fogassi, Leonardo;Casile, Antonino
其他人执行的动作可能对观察者有不同的相关性，从而导致不同的行为反应，这取决于它们执行的空间区域。我们发现，在恒河猴中，由执行和观察运动行为激活的前运动皮层神经元（镜像神经元）受到所观察到的运动行为相对于猴子的空间位置的差异调制，其中大约一半更喜欢猴子的个人周围或个人以外的空间。这些空间选择性镜像神经元的一部分根据度量表示对空间进行编码，而其他神经元则以操作术语对空间进行编码，根据猴子与物体互动的可能性改变其属性。这些结果表明，一组镜像神经元编码所观察到的运动行为，不仅动作理解，而且分析这些行为的功能，是相关的产生适当的行为。
Actions performed by others may have different relevance for the observer, and thus lead to different behavioral responses, depending on the regions of space in which they are executed. We found that in rhesus monkeys, the premotor cortex neurons activated by both the execution and the observation of motor acts (mirror neurons) are differentially modulated by the location in space of the observed motor acts relative to the monkey, with about half of them preferring either the monkey's peripersonal or extrapersonal space. A portion of these spatially selective mirror neurons encode space according to a metric representation, whereas other neurons encode space in operational terms, changing their properties according to the possibility that the monkey will interact with the object. These results suggest that a set of mirror neurons encodes the observed motor acts not only for action understanding, but also to analyze such acts in terms of features that are relevant to generating appropriate behaviors.